The Portrait and the Colonial Imaginary. Photography between France and Africa, 1900–1939

Abstract

Simon Dell has published extensively in the fields of twentieth-century art history the history of photography and design history. His main research is concentrated to aspects of visual culture in France during the s and s, ranging from the avant-garde to anonymous photojournalism. In his latest book, Portrait and the Colonial Imaginary. Photography between France and Africa, – () Dell is moving beyond traditional European art history trajectories. Instead, he investigates the various roles portraiture played in colonial Africa. French colonizers of the Third republic (French government from  to ) asserted that it was not oppression, but liberation that was the aim of the colonial project in Africa. Dell examines the structure of French colonialism and the challenges created by it through three events in which photography played an important role in the relations between France and Africa. The perspectives move from that of French in Africa to that of Africans in France and finally to that of Africans as they met the French in Africa. The book is divided into four parts followed by an epilogue. In the first chapter “Making Men: Citizens and Subjects” Dell argues that the French colonizers attempted to create a new humanity departing from the formula of liberté, égalité, fraternité and these ideas became deeply entangled with a French mission to civilize the colonial subjects. This was clear under the ministries of Jules Ferry in the s but could be detected later. According to Dell, the ideology of liberation was a Republican imaginary which was going to be complete with its creation of colonial imaginary. Dell explores how the portraiture functioned in the colonial project. The French missionaries Élie Allégret and Charles Maître saw it as their duty to act as models of this kind. The pastors Kuo, Ekollo and Modi Din in Cameroon also acted as models, however, they also realized the problematic relationship with this kind of representations. Dell asserts that these portraits were to take their place in a long tradition of representing the self. This was, according to Dell, a European tradition which had formulated a particular set of subjectivity and pictorial practices. In the following three chapters, the different effects of the European portraiture tradition are analysed. The second chapter “Perception, apperception and disavowal: André Gide and Marc Allégret in Congo” Dell analyses the journey by Gide and Allégret (Élie’s son) through central Africa from July  to May . Gide’s account of the journey was published in the two-volume book Voyage au Congo and Retour du Tchad, and Allégret produced a -minute film during the journey and took over  photographs.  of these photos were reproduced in an illustrated edition of Gide’s journal. Dell argues that these publications and media practices were important in reworking European exploration